The Really Great Rivals Of Ixalan Commander Update

It has been quite a long time since I've been as excited about a set for Commander as I've been with Rivals of Ixalan. There have been some great cards for the format from recent releases, but nothing has generated the raw anticipation of playing new cards like this set has.

As is my habit during release week, I'll offer you here the updates that the new set will bring to my ever-expanding suite of decks. Longtime readers will know that during this update, I only put one version of a new
card into the whole collection; there are a few from Rivals of Ixalan which strain my desire for such self-imposed limits. I'll also go through the never-easy task of telling you which cards are going out of those decks. There are loads of wonderful cards in Magic; sometimes we stop playing them only because we want to play newer ones. Such is the case with many of the choices I'll make; it's not a commentary on the card itself (although there are always some underperformers), just recognition that I want to try something new.

White

When you have a "+1/+1 counters matter" deck, you keep finding clever ways of abusing said counters. Moving counters from other creatures like Spike Weaver onto Paladin of Atonement is full of winning, especially when you have Hardened Scales, since you get an extra. Oath of Ajani wasn't really spreading out as many counters as I had hoped, so it was the easy cut.

It seems like the Angel deck is the one that should get the card with radiant in the name, and it's great for the tribe. Minion Reflector did its work often enough-copying Serra Avatar-that it can move onto another deck to make reflections of new things.

Slaughter the Strong is inexpensive enough that you can play it on the same turn as Faith's Reward. Since the Saskia deck doesn't have much board control (it's pretty aggressive), it seemed like a nice way to jump forward. White Sun's Zenith is a casualty to playing it in a number of other decks.

It's hard to modify a deck you recently made, but in the context of there being new and cool Dinosaurs, it's going to happen here more than once. Spitemare was a neat find, but Trapjaw Tyrant will do a little more heavy lifting in the deck.

Obzedat is all about not letting other creatures be on the battlefield, especially destroying them during other players' turns. Zetalpa, who is simply a beating, can survive most of those things. Sun Titan comes out for being in so many other decks.

In a deck all about drawing cards so its creatures can be bigger, you draw more cards. I will frequently enough have the city's blessing. In this particular deck, my Defense of the Heart pairs are so bad that I just want to move it elsewhere; where that might be is TBD.

What I just said about drawing cards? Ditto. Nezahal feeds everyone else, provides strong beats, and my hand has enough cards in it to use the last ability. Pathbreaker Ibex is a little out of place in this deck; it will find a new home in the eventual rebuild of my Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder deck from the Commander Rotisserie Draft.

Animar, Soul of Elements is frequently the target of peoples' hate, and justifiably so. It can get expensive to cast subsequent times, so saving it by releasing it to the wind is nice self-preservation. Since you're casting it from exile and not the command zone, you don't even have to pay the
commander tax (see Rule 8 for more details).

It's starting to look like Rivals of Ixalan is the "let's rebuild Phelddagrif" set. Again, I'm going to have the city's blessing already, so the additional card draw is quite likely to happen. Profound Journey has been disappointingly unprofound, so it goes away.

Again, I'm not a huge fan of updating decks that I just built, but in this
case I asked myself if Timestream Navigator would have been in Ixalan, would I have put it in straight away. The answer is a resounding yes. Rough beats, Wily Goblin.

Kresh sometimes has a little trouble casting things, but it can kill them pretty good. Getting to play off of a pile from someone else's deck makes Gonti, Lord of Luxury very happy; there's probably the beginnings of a deck there. Kothphed has been okay, but not spectacular enough to keep around.

The Pirate tutor had to go into the Pirate deck. What's sad is taking out the Pirate Ship, which is sweet thematically but not all that great otherwise. Since Forerunner of the Coalition is equally thematic, I'm not bothered.

Pitiless Plunderer will not doubt help me Revel in Riches at some point. Or just fuel getting more Pirates to show up. The more Pirates become available, the less I need to turn everything into a Pirate, so Arcane Adaption isn't all that necessary (although it'd be cool to cast Forerunner of the Coalition to get anything in the deck).

What's weird is that the rest of the deck might be too good at killing creatures for Tetizmoc to be super-useful, but I'm willing to take the chance. The deck doesn't create enough creatures for Ghost Council to be as useful as I'd like.

It might seem like Twilight Prophet goes into the Vampire deck, but I prefer to have it in a deck in which I gain a great deal of life. Karador definitely does that. I played Karador recently and had a number of chances to search the deck, and Liliana was always left behind in favor of other things. I have a non-foil version in Gisa and Geralf Together Forever , so taking it out of here is a little less painful.

What better deck to make everyone else sacrifice a bunch of creatures than the one that will get murderously large? That Vona's Hunger is an instant might surprise someone who hasn't blocked with a one-shot commander damage kill. The deck has always struggled to support Cryptic Command, so I felt like it was an easy removal; I'm sure I'll build a new deck in the near future which can use it.

As I mentioned earlier, Kresh sometimes has trouble casting stuff-mostly from me including more beat sticks than setup. Etali is salve for that wound. Depending on what gets exiled, it may just stay there. Creatures especially might get left behind because they'll die eventually and go to their owners' graveyards, which puts a crimp into my Living Death plans.

Getting the right Dinosaur is a nice start, but since the deck is quite enraged, we'll get lots of triggers. Scourge of Kher Ridges was in the deck to do exactly what Forerunner of the Empire does-it might be more flexible, but it's also quite a bit more expensive. We'll see how it plays out.

The deck is getting really angry, isn't it? Raptor Hatchling only gets us one use. Silverclad Ferocidons will clear the path for our other thunder lizards to start rampaging all over peoples' faces. The only problem is that I'm running out of stuff I want to take out of the deck already, and I know there's some goodies coming up in green.

The defensive possibilities of Cherished Hatchling exist in addition to just slamming it into people. There's not much advantage of giving them flash on your own turn, since you might have been casting them anyway, but the opportunity to fight other creatures provides you with a combat advantage opponents might not be able to overcome.

Because Ghalta's ability helps pay the commander tax, it makes sense to have it at the helm of your mono-green deck. For me, making such a thing is a task for down the road, so I'm putting it into a deck right away. And sure, I could put it into Gishath, but that's already getting enough updates and I want to spread around the power a little. One of the tools that the Adun Oakenshield deck doesn't really have is the giant face-smasher. It durdles around really well and finds some ways to kill people occasionally (like by bloodrushing a Rubblehulk), but I like the idea of the huge, obvious threat on the board as well.

I've previously mentioned that explore as a mechanic interests me, but the creatures that have it don't. Giving it to all my creatures, on the other hand, changes how I look at it. It seems like putting it into the "+1/+1 counters matter" deck is the right call. I know that I keep hammering home the idea that you need to play your Fogs (and eat your vegetables and stay in school), but there are other Fog effects in the deck, so I feel safer moving Tangle out.

I could be setting myself up for failure here. The deck has only one sacrifice outlet: Miren, the Moaning Well. If I cast Polyraptor with Aether Flash on the battlefield, we infinitely loop the game into a draw (unless someone else has a way to stop it), as each copy of Polyraptor will create another, and so on. I suppose I could also use Fault Line at some point-but I'll live out on the edge on this one. It'd be easy to shove Goblin Bombardment or Altar of Dementia in there, so who wants that?

The deck is all about adding +1/+1 counters; Strength of the Pack will add twice as many as Fuel for the Cause. Sure, there's no counterspell backup, but sometime's life is about playing through the tough parts without having every answer.

Thrashing Brontodon is a straight upgrade in a Karador deck over Wickerbough Elder. They basically do the same thing, but the Brontodon ends up in the graveyard, where I want it. You mileage might vary in other kinds of decks; for this style, it's the right answer.

Any land ramping is fine in Animar, because some of the cards, to include the commander, are sometimes tricky to cast. The Swordtooth will help me get the city's blessing soon enough that I don't care that it won't be able to attack or block for a few turns. Nevermaker is still one of my favorite cards, and it's done great service in this deck-it's just time for a change.

There are lots of good dredge cards in recent sets, but I don't have a dredge deck. What I do have is a "mill everybody" deck in The Mimeoplasm, so that's the spot for World Shaper. The dream, of course, is an early Mesmeric Orb, lots of activity, and then shaping the world.

Multicolored

The opponents can still cast instants and sorceries on your turn, so be careful when you battle with Azor. Of course, since the trigger is on attacking instead of combat damage, you might not even care; once could be enough.

I want my Pirates to be deadly and dangerous. If they also happen to pillage stuff off of you, that's great, too. But beating your face is even better. Rowdy Crew falls into the same pile as other cards that wouldn't have gotten chosen if all the Pirates came out at once.

Getting lifelinking Vampires instead of just 2/2 Bears is better in my book, especially since Elenda will be lifelinking me up some before she goes away. There's an easy argument to have her as the commander of her own deck. You solve the dies/command zone problem by having a card like Scrabbling Claws. Let Elenda hit the graveyard, then use Scrabbling Claws to exile her, choosing to instead put her in the command zone. While you're not doing these kinds of tricks with Scrabbling Claws, use it to keep other graveyards under control.

There's a compelling argument to build Zacama its own deck, which I will no doubt do down the road, especially since it doesn't really have to be a Dinosaur deck. There are any number of flavors that build could take, from Voltron to Good Stuff. The only limit is imagination. For now, Zacama will head into the Gishath deck so that I can play with it until I find the time to build a new one.

Double-Faced

Hadana's Climb, or more correctly, Winged Temple of Orazca, solves one of the problems this deck has, namely getting through with creatures; it simply doesn't have that many with evasion abilities. The Winged Temple can make Prime Speaker Zegana into a one-shot commander damage kill pretty easily, especially with Crowned Ceratok on the battlefield. No insult to Reverent Hunter, Hadana's Climb makes the deck more dangerous.

This card has my name written all over it. It's just one of the cards that I'll love playing, even if it doesn't win games for me (which I suspect it will). One of the anxieties I always have about the Karador deck is getting blown out by some mass removal while I'm building up a good graveyard. Atzal, the Cave of Eternity will help me to tricks and occasionally save stuff as well. Playing with Razaketh was about as little fun as I expected it to be. Tutoring for anything is an efficient way of winning games; it's also thoroughly boring.

Even though she's moved to being a flying beatdown with Dragons deck, Merieke Ri Berit still has control elements. Profane Procession is one of the best control elements in a long time. The good news is that you can just exile stuff and let it stay there. There's nothing that says you have to let it back into the wild. Of course, you probably will, since it'll help you kill people more deader.

I want to play this more to see what all the fuss is about. Intet draws enough cards that there will always be the ones I can afford to exile, and then the Sanctum of the Sun will provide mana for a big Comet Storm. All the love to Proteus Staff, but the card was one of the first in the deck, so it's time for it to rest-for a while. I won't put it back in the box, I'll put it in the "cool card to put into a deck somewhere" pile.

Most new cards have an obvious deck to go into. Others, like The Immortal Sun, can go nearly anywhere. I just had to find a deck with no planeswalkers in it. I solved the problem by putting it into a deck with only one, and making that planeswalker what I took out.

The idea behind the Glissa deck is to keep running through the artifacts. Orazca Relic will help get things going by providing a little extra mana, but then once those engines are running, shift over to being part of the drive train. Implement of Malice could go because while drawing the card is nice, I'm not a fan of making people discard in small batches-since in this format, there are things they actually want in their graveyards.

Make that 35 different land names for Awakened Amalgam, with some extra card draw to boot.

Count 'em, 43 new cards from Rivals of Ixalan are going into my decks, and that doesn't even include the cards which will go into the Prime Speaker Zegana Do-Over, likely getting us over 50. This truly is one of those sets which will have a strong impact on Commander for quite some time to come. Many of the cards are downright spectacular and fun without breaking anything; I hope you will enjoy them as much as I will.

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About Sheldon Menery

Magic Judge Hall of Famer Sheldon Menery is one of the most influential judges in the history of the game and pioneered Commander. He lives in Lakeland, Florida with his wife, where he's pursuing a Master's Degree in English Literature, and has an RPG that's being going since 1987.